


impalpable ash

by pseudocitrus



Category: Tokyo Ghoul, Tokyo Ghoul:re
Genre: F/M, Hate Sex, Mild Gore, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-29
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-23 23:48:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4896940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudocitrus/pseuds/pseudocitrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haise needs to interrogate Cochlea's newest prisoner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	impalpable ash

**Author's Note:**

> i don’t have an excuse for this one i just wanted tousaki hatesex. but it kinda turned out sad instead? and kinda sudden? anyway;;
> 
> hope you're having a good day!

Haise starts down the corridor, and stops, right before crossing the cell window.

“I know you’re there,” calls a voice. “If you’re trying to hide, you’re doing a shit job at it.”

He swallows and steps forward. As soon as he comes into view, he draws himself up and makes a smile.

“Good evening, Rabbit.”

Rabbit’s eye narrows, and she spits at the glass. Haise ignores it and sits down. Rabbit is in her seat this time — not much of an improvement, but he can use any sign he can get. He clears his throat.

“I wanted to bring you a cup of coffee,” he says. “But it won’t fit under the slot. So…”

He withdraws a bunched-up napkin from his pocket and slides it over to her side of the glass. Rabbit glares at him, and for a second, it looks like she’s not going to take it — but then her fingers reach, and fold over it. She tears at the paper’s twist, and the napkin unravels to reveal a handful of roasted, whole coffee beans.

“Amazing,” Rabbit says in a monotone. “Just what I wanted. You’re great at this, Kaneki.”

Fueguchi calling him _Onii-chan_ was uncomfortable; Rabbit calling him _Kaneki_ is unbearable. Every syllable feels like a boulder dropped into his stomach. He tries to strengthen his voice.

“L-listen,” he says. “I think…I think a person’s identity is made up of different memories that they’ve had. You know? Both the good ones, and the bad ones. So, even though I know that everyone really liked Kaneki-san a lot, I’m really not —”

He stops, stiffens. Rabbit’s head is tipping back; even though she’s shorter, somehow she manages to look down on him.

“Is that what you think?” she asks. “That everyone _liked_ you?”

Rabbit waits, but when he can’t think of anything to say, she crams the napkin and coffee beans back to his side of the window. Her voice is a hiss.

“Leave me alone.”

“Rabbit,” Haise pleads. “Please. It’s — it’s been almost a week already. If you don’t talk to me, there’s nothing I can do to save you.”

“Typical Kaneki,” Rabbit says, leaning back in her chair and looking at the wall. “Trying to help people who didn’t ask for it.”

“But, it’s not that you want to die, right? I really want to help. I mean — I kind of understand, a little bit. You all,” Haise says, “just want to live a life like everyone else,” and this is something he's thought about for a long time, this is, he thinks, the perfect way to phrase it, but rather than looking at him with relief, Rabbit’s eyes flare. She stands, and even though he administered the gas suppressant to her himself this morning, he sees that her eye is black.

“‘ _King of Fakes_ ,’” she snarls. “I really couldn’t believe it, but it’s fucking true, isn’t it? Even the things you think make up this nice, new, clean personality of yours are just the same old shit.”

She drops down to eye level and he makes himself keep her gaze.

“A person’s memories aren’t what make them, Kaneki. It’s their actions. You never showed anyone anything, and nothing about you was ever real. As far as I’m concerned, all you are is the same helpless coward you were when we first met.”

Haise swallows. She hates him — she really, really hates him. It shouldn't bother him. He can’t let it bother him.

“Are you done?” Haise asks back, as calmly as possible. Rabbit stares at him and then dumps herself back down into her seat.

“No,” she says. “Actually, I’m kind of curious about something.”

Her voice softens, and, suddenly, she’s once again the barista of :re. Beautiful and gentle.

“Do you like your life here, Sensei?” she asks. She pushes her hair behind her ear; she blinks away the black from her eye. “Are you happy?”

Haise blinks.

“Y-yeah,” he says, “I am,” and her eyes break from his to look at his hand for some reason, and he quickly puts it back into his lap.

“Yeah,” she says. “That’s what I thought.”

And she refuses to speak any more.

:::

If Akira was flustered by having Yotsume in Cochlea, it’s nothing compared to now. Haise takes pains to avoid running into her, and avoids, too, everyone else he can. Yotsume’s escape was a disaster. If he hadn’t managed to pin Rabbit at the last minute…well, he isn’t sure what would have happened to him.

It certainly doesn’t seem helpful to speculate. Or extrapolate, from the agents whispering in the halls around him.

_He’s a ghoul._

That Rabbit had turned out to be someone so close to him, and affiliated with a cafe, had been another hard blow. People keep mentioning _the Raid_ beneath their breath and his headaches increase in frequency and intensity. Sharp pangs stab through his skull and eye sockets. He feels himself getting weaker.

And feels Kaneki growing strong.

 _Do everything you can to save her,_ Kaneki murmurs, right into his ear, and Haise mumbles, “I’m trying.”

_Not hard enough._

“She’s not making it easy.”

_Neither are you._

Like he needs insults coming from him too right now. Haise makes himself take a deep breath.

 _Let’s go,_ Kaneki urges, and again Haise considers rejecting him, and again finds himself opening the door.

He enters the room where he can access surveillance of Rabbit’s cell, and, after signing in and finishing setup, he begins speeding through the footage.

After a week, he’s come to know Rabbit’s usual behavior. Unlike Fueguchi, she doesn’t cry, and she doesn’t read the books he gives her. She changes in and out of her plain captive’s uniform without fuss, and Haise always looks away. She spends a majority of her time sitting on the ground beside her bed, hugging her knees. Occasionally, she stretches, going through the same routine that Haise does.

Maybe we learned it from a book, Haise thinks, and Kaneki is silent.

He finishes reviewing what it was he intended to review. There's probably nothing more to learn from watching now, but he stays anyway. The idea of facing those mutters outside again, and so soon, is a palpable pressure that keeps the door shut.

He slows back to normal speed after the footage starts to show him leaving her cell the day before, and he watches as Rabbit remains seated at her chair for almost ten more minutes. Then her hand creeps forward, beneath the glass, toward the coffee beans.

 _Oh,_ he and Kaneki think, and they lean forward. Rabbit pinches a bean in her fingers and smells it. It’s the same brand of coffee that was in :re, and he hopes that she’ll be pleased to smell something familiar again. She looks up, directly at the camera, and Haise almost jumps back at her look of fury.

“Bastard,” she growls. “Monster.”

 _It’s okay,_ Kaneki says, _she does that, she has a temper,_ but something about it shakes Haise, and he jabs his finger and turns off the screen. He starts to leave, as quickly as possible, but just as his hand is on the knob, his body jerks to a halt.

 _Look,_ Kaneki says.

But Haise’s eyes are already down on the sign-in sheet. He hadn’t noticed it before, but right above his signature…is Akira’s.

Haise searches his memory.

 _No,_ Kaneki says quietly. _She doesn’t have any assignments that should put her in here._

He’s sure?

 _Yeah. Keep looking,_ Kaneki urges, but he doesn’t need to; Haise is already lifting up the papers, and paging back. Ever since Rabbit was detained, Akira has been here every day.

:::

Rabbit isn’t safe here. And the more he dodges Akira’s urging to fulfill his rights, the louder the agents mutter around him, and the louder Kaneki gets too. Rabbit won’t last much longer if she doesn’t yield anything. Haise suspects that he himself won’t last much longer, either.

 _Help her._ Kaneki’s voice isn’t like a small child’s anymore. It’s loud, deep, insistent. _Help her._

“I’m _trying_ ,” Haise says, and Rabbit’s eyes narrow.

“I’m trying to help,” Haise amends, and Rabbit looks away again. She’s sitting on the ground, in her usual spot; she hasn’t said a single word to him about anything. Desperately, Haise tries something different.

“Were you my enemy?” he asks. “Before?”

“No,” Rabbit says, after a while. “I wasn't.”

“Then you and Kaneki were friends,” he says, and Rabbit snorts.

“No.” She rubs the knuckles of one hand absently. “Not very good ones.”

Kaneki looks away and down. Haise leans forward, until his forehead is almost resting on the glass.

“Whatever it was that you had with Kaneki before…it doesn’t matter, right? This is the situation now. I know that we don’t know each other so well, but…”

But the glances they shared at :re — the way that they discussed the store’s different roasts and different novels — her smile and the way it had seemed to have less and less sadness each day.

“I really want to help you,” he says. “But there’s nothing to be done about it if what you want is really to stay locked up in here. So…can you at least tell me if you want to get out at all?”

Rabbit’s gaze rises. It remains dim, but, to his relief, she trudges to the chair, and sits. Her mouth opens.

“I really want to help you,” she tells him. “But there’s nothing to be done about it if what you want is really to stay locked up in here. So, can you at least tell me if you want to get out at all?”

Haise feels his face redden. “Rabbit —”

“Kaneki.”

He grips his head. Tries again. “Rab —”

“Kaneki.”

He doesn’t notice his grip tightening. He stands, so swiftly his chair screeches backward. He doesn’t spare her a look, doesn’t even say goodbye.

:::

How close is he to who Kaneki was, really? They’re two different people, aren’t they? Different good memories. Different bad memories.

But. The nightmares.

Racing after a figure with tears on the back of her clothes, where her kagune used to be. The judder of his arm as Yukimura ⅓ meets the resistance of meat, and then bone. Carrying her up in his arms, only to watch her body bend back and fragment wetly into tumbling limbs that won’t, no matter how hard he tries, fit properly inside an increasingly bloody suitcase.

:::

“Sasaki-san,” Kijima says, “I would be happy to do it,” and Kaneki stiffens, and Haise shakes his head, and loudly summons agents to help. Rabbit says nothing when they come to collect her, just yanks her arm from the grasp of the investigators and stalks down of her own will behind him.

The room has two chairs, one of which is bolted down, and this is the one they shackle her to. There is a single table with glass-and-metal instruments, which she eyes. She looks up and around, but Haise answers her question for her: “No cameras.”

If it scares her, she doesn’t show it. Her eyes just narrow further. Haise locks the door after the other investigators leave, and then turns and walks to the table. The instruments rattle as he rifles through them, and then he finds what he’s looking for: a key. He approaches her and unlocks her cuffs. She rubs her wrists, gaze following him as he sits down across from her.

Silence.

What should he do?

Maybe this is useless. What is he even expecting to happen? Rabbit is looking at the floor.

 _She’s probably thinking, too,_ Kaneki says. _Of what she should say_.

She comes up with something before he does.

“So, it turns out you’re a pretty shitty torturer too, huh?”

Haise takes a breath before responding. “Of course I wasn’t planning on actually…hurting you. I’m not like that.” He looks down at his hands, rubbing the side of a knuckle with his thumb. “I just thought maybe we could talk.”

“So it’s torture after all,” Rabbit sighs. She begins to stretch her arms. “How is this going to go, then? Are we just going to sit here for hours while you talk me to death? Or,” she says, when Haise yawns, “are you just going to take a nap?”

“Sorry. Um. I haven’t been sleeping well recently.” Haise rubs his palms into his eyes. The days have been so long. The nights have been even longer. And this situation that they’re both in...he just...he has no idea how to bring this to any sort of end. He doesn’t even know where to begin.

 _Just be honest_.

“Today is probably the last day,” Haise confesses. “The...the last day that I can...manage.” He looks up, and wishes that there was something, anything on her face, even if it was the barista smile.

“I did what I could,” he says.

“Do you want me to thank you?” Rabbit asks.

He feels his body start to heat. “No,” he says slowly.

“Well, thanks anyway,” she says. “For almost making someone who cares about you into a quinque, after she tried to help you.”

“I was trying to —”

“And for joining up with a bunch of murderers.”

“Rab —”

“And for refusing to accept who you are just because you’d rather leave us all behind than face the mistakes you made.”

 _“Stop.”_ His voice comes out rough. He rubs his left eye and tries to stop from talking further and can’t. “It’s not like I — I’m not — I can’t —”

“Spare me, Kaneki,” Rabbit snarls, and that is it, that’s it, Haise stands and she stands too.

“What did Kaneki ever do to you?” he demands. “Please tell me. I want to know. What did he do? What can I do to make it up to you? Is it possible for me to make it up to you at all?”

He spreads his arms and takes a step forward, desperate suddenly to get closer than the glass wall between them had ever allowed. Rabbit doesn’t move, and he takes another step closer.

“I’m different,” he pleads. “Don’t you remember me?”

The late nights at the cafe, with just him, without his squad; the way she smiled and leaned over the counter to chat with him.

“Rabbit,” he calls hopefully, and for a second he thinks that he’s broken through — she looks up at him, not like Rabbit anymore, but like the person that used to smile at him from behind the espresso machine. She catches his eyes — looks down — looks back at him, biting her lip. She raises a shaky hand toward him, and Haise can’t believe it, he hesitates and then steps forward to take it. Their fingers brush, and there is a weight around his wrist. And a _click_.

She shackled him to her chair.

Something wells up in him, something hot and boiling that makes him reel so hard he can’t stop the next _click_ from happening, and now he’s bound by both hands. Haise yanks, and then yanks harder, but the chains only rattle taut, the quinque steel only scrapes and bites into his wrists. Rabbit breaks into a run.

_No! Don’t let her go —_

His uniform emits a loud _rip_ — and then there’s a crash, as his kagune slam down onto the ground, cutting off her path before she can touch the doorknob. Rabbit whirls with a glare and then leaps out of the way, just barely, when another kagune dives at her. She loses her balance; her back crashes against a wall.

“Give up,” Haise growls, but of course she doesn’t; she dashes off again, this time toward the other side of the room.

Toward the table, he realizes. One whip of another kagune is all it takes to break the chains connecting him to the chair; then he races to intercept her, and yanks her shoulder back just as her hand closes around the syringe containing Rc suppressant. She is flung onto the ground, but she doesn’t release the syringe; she just grips it tighter, and kicks out at the back of his knees.

Haise topples and hisses with pain and Rabbit whirls him around just to punch him in the face. His kagune spasm, and she grits her teeth as one cuts her forearm, but she just punches him again, jabbing his kidney successfully even once he blocks her first strike. He chokes and can’t resist when she flings him onto his back and then clambers onto him, sitting her weight heavily on his chest, pinning him down. His body jerks as his kagune slither and rise and point their blades down at her from every side, and they stop centimeters from her skin as she pinches his jaw and holds him still and aims the syringe directly at his right tear duct.

It was a short scuffle, but Cochlea hasn’t left her in optimal condition; she’s panting, sweat rolling down her forehead. Haise is panting too.

 _Don’t,_ Kaneki screams, _don’t,_ Haise begs himself, _don’t, don’t, don’t,_ don’t lose control, don’t lose control, don’t twitch and impale her four different ways, don’t hurt her, don’t. Don’t. Don’t panic at the little droplet of suppressant beading big at the edge of the needle. He is hyperventilating, a little, despite the fact that her weight is crushing his lungs. For some reason, he feels like his whole body is going cold.

“Touka,” he gasps. “Please.”

The syllables spill out of him from nowhere. Her eye widens. Her hands shake. Her lips purse and her hand blurs and Haise bites back a yell and tries to jerk his head away and is able to, because she has released him. She flings the syringe at the wall and the glass of it shatters.

“Bastard,” she mutters. “Even after everything that you...I can’t…I just…I can’t do it after all. I can’t do this. You shitty bastard.”

She makes a fist and pounds it down, on the floor beside his head. Her eye is turning red — not the pupil, but the parts around it. She heaves a breath, and then clenches his collar.

“Kaneki.” Her voice is bare. “Please come back.”

She’s shifting her weight. Now she’s sitting lower on his body, but he still feels like the breath is being rolled out of him.

“ _Kaneki,_ ” she begs again, and Haise waits, but Kaneki, for once, is silent, is nowhere. He needs to handle this himself, and being soft with her hasn’t worked thus far, so for the first time, Haise tries to make his expression cold.

“I’m not him.”

“ _No!”_ Her gaze flares. _“Shut up!_ I know — I know that he —”

“Kaneki was erased.” Almost erased. Though he certainly isn’t speaking up for himself now.

She is looking furious again, and finally, his best intentions are cracking. He is tired. And this is tiring.

“I’m different,” he tells her. “I have a different life. I’m not him.”

“Shut up!”

“I’m not him.”

“ _No!_ ”

“My name is Sasaki Hai —”

He doesn’t finish. He’s cut off by a warmth, a moisture, a pressure — her mouth on his, vicious. They inhale sharply. A tear on her cheek presses onto his, right on the sore spot her knuckles left. Touka straightens and searches his eyes for something, anything, and Haise raises his hand to her face and holds it steady as he leans up and returns her kiss.

It isn’t soft. Their teeth click — he shifts to hold her more firmly — his kagune flatten against the floor and rake it in time with his nails dragging along her shoulders.

 _Fine,_ he says, with the way he sucks at her lower lip.  _Fine._

_Is this what it is that you want?_

He has been asking her for days and maybe this is the answer, the only thing that will really put her to rest: to be touched and tasted by someone and finally realize that he is a stranger.

But every brash caress and line left on her skin from his nails is returned, multiplied, strengthened. Her breath is getting rough, and the joints of her fingers getting pale. Her throat is tremulous with swallows and he kisses it — she hisses, and drops her hips to grind against his — he gasps, and hooks his fingers on the hem of her uniform pants and pushes it down her thighs. She shivers — maybe from the cold steel of the cuff still circling his wrists — or maybe from the flat of his palm on her bare waist. And lower.

And now it’s him shuddering. Her skin is — so soft. It dips and prickles lusciously beneath the pads of his fingers. If she is really someone to him, he doesn’t remember it, he really — has no —  and yet —

He should be more uncomfortable, with a stranger pushing his shirt up, it should feel less good and he should maybe want it less, he should be doing something to stop her from running her hands across his stomach and then between his legs. Her palms move up and down over his slacks, and his back arches and his body squirms but he can’t quite hide his erection from her, and when she draws back the buttons and zipper, he can’t muster any protest beyond pinching her lip a little tighter between his teeth. She tastes beautiful. And her hands —

His kagune thrash again, scraping, continuing to wither away as his focus is stolen away by her squeezing, stroking palms. Haise chokes and his vision whirls and when it focuses again it’s only because she has stopped to regard him and that is unacceptable. He straightens, shifts, tips her onto the ground. She drags his hips up to begin working down his slacks; he raises her legs to yank off her pants.

Is this what they used to have? His fingers coming away wet, and her hair falling back to reveal hazy eyes, and her shirt bunched up to her collarbone to reveal breasts peaked before he even sets his tongue on them — is this an echo?

He doesn’t know if their biting and her ragged moans are any better than the glares that follow him, or his squad who needs him, or Arima or Akira or Suzuya or even the checkered floor at headquarters that is perfectly smooth and yet always makes him stumble. He doesn’t know if it’s any better but it doesn’t stop him from wanting to hear her voice grow louder, or stop him from helping her invert her shirt over her head, helping her climb onto his lap.

Her fingers, lifting and posing; her legs on either side of him, and her slow kneel. He enters her and yet the heat that follows feels like it is seeping into _him_ , into the center of every bone, and catching sparks. The two of them shudder and scratch together, and, for once, he loses his gentleness and doesn’t fight to reclaim it. Touka’s skin can take Haise’s nails and her strained pleas tell him that she relishes every rough thrust. Every backhand whisper, every nightmare, every time he dug his fingers into his face with helplessness — everything builds, pierces, converts into a whine, a clutch, a tremble of unsuppressable pleasure.

She finishes — the balls of her feet stamping the cement, her teeth biting into his shoulder hard enough to draw blood. Even afterward, though, her legs keep pressing, and her mouth keeps suckling, and she rolls her hips in time to help him penetrate deeper, deeper, deeper. Pressure builds across his body — his eyes, his toes — he halts, teetering, shaking, trapped, until Touka draws his ear to her lips and murmurs his name.


End file.
